


Deus Ex Machina

by alliedtowinter



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Face Nemesis Reyn, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Surgery, Temporary Amnesia, it is quite a lot, it's Face surgery pretty standard stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26572417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliedtowinter/pseuds/alliedtowinter
Summary: When Colony 9 is under attack, Reyn does what he does best: protecting others. He’s a little too good at it.Fate adjusts accordingly, but it answers to nothing but itself, not even to gods. It’s got a funny way of working things out.
Relationships: Egil & Vanea (Xenoblade Chronicles), Egil/Reyn, Fiora & Reyn (Xenoblade Chronicles), Fiora & Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles), Reyn & Vanea (Xenoblade Chronicles)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 26





	1. Branching Paths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyn is a little too good at protecting other people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to my epic rarepair hell fic of a ship nobody cares about but me!
> 
> inspired by: [my close good friend](https://instagram.com/meta_caballero?igshid=x59nlzsax5sj)  
> and big big thanks to my beta readers  
> [(X)](https://twitter.com/joobheon)  
> [(X)](https://twitter.com/Dragonwishes)  
> [(X)](https://twitter.com/bitter_blade)  
> 

It’s the first time Reyn’s ever seen a real battle, and of course it’s the biggest Mechon attack on home territory since the battle of Sword Valley. The universe has a sense of humor. Fighting mindless machines is nothing like the stray Bunnits and Krabbles he’s used to. They go down with one or two swings, but these enemies don’t stop when injured, they fight until they’re nothing more than burning piles of scrap. It’s exhausting work to bash them to bits. Every time he and Shulk destroy one, three more take its place. His gunlance driver can only fire so many ether shots before he’s got to find some more crystals to refuel with, and Fiora’s taken most of them to power up the mobile artillery. He usually carries the standard issue canisters of water ether, but he’s given most of those to Shulk. Reyn trusts Shulk to heal him if necessary more than he trusts himself. Once he runs out of ammo, it’ll be a glorified shield, about as useful as the hunks of metal he’s using it to destroy. Reyn’s never been fond of shooting ether blasts. After they leave the weapon, it’s a roll of the dice if they actually go where intended. Square-tache always got on his ass about his poor accuracy, but never actually provided any instruction on how to improve it, deeming it a lost cause: hopeless, like the rest of him. He wishes he’d asked Dunban for help. Their friendly neighborhood war hero made ether blasting look easy. 

He joined up with the Defense Force shortly after the Battle of Sword Valley. After graduating, he hadn’t really known what else to do, and it presented itself as the ideal option. Shulk’s future was his to decide, graduating top of their (quite small) class, with Fiora closer to the middle of the pack but still quite intelligent. Both had futures brighter than the sun, so he’d protect them until they could get there. As long as he could do some push-ups and run a couple kilometers fast enough, the Defense Course wouldn’t turn him away, even with his subpar grades all through secondary (he'd even been held back a year when he was real young). It wasn’t his fault the words didn’t sit still on the page, or that the teachers talked so bloody slow their speech blended together. Loads of his friends had done the same thing too, some of them to avenge parents, siblings, friends, lost in the battle, and some to be the next Dunban. Reyn was a little bit of both. 

Training with human soldiers and rerouting lost migrating wildlife is barely adequate when it comes to real threats like this. They just have to stall until Fiora reaches the mobile artillery with the ether canisters to refuel it. Once she’s ready, she’ll blast the attackers away. Dunban’s nowhere to be found, leaving Reyn and Shulk alone together against a tidal wave of machines. They can manage well enough. Reyn’s driver doesn’t need to cut through the Mechon if it can just hit them so hard it dislodges their circuits. Armor isn’t very useful against pure brute force, and every attack meant for Shulk that he blocks is one wasted. All they have to do is buy time for Fiora. 

The ground shakes beneath him as a _heavy_ machine crash-lands in front and rounds on them. Reyn’s never seen a Mechon with a metal face before, and he’d like to never see one again, because it’s one annoying prick. Even the Monado can’t cut it, although it seems the metal-faced Mechon pays way more attention to (small, quiet) Shulk than him, preferring to ignore the more immediate threat Reyn presents. He’s almost insulted. Is he really that much of a small fry? The hulking Mechon several times his size seems to think so. Whatever. What’s that expression Shulk used in the schoolyard when the other kids bullied him? _The harder they are, the bigger they fall?_

It slaps them both aside. it can’t smile, but Reyn swears its faceplate moves up in a mockery of a grin. Just when Reyn starts wondering when Shulk’ll tell him to make a run for it, Fiora comes barreling around the corner with a whole lot more firepower. Perfect. “I won’t let you hurt any more people,” Fiora yelled, straining her vocal cords to be heard. She was not going to lie down and die, driving the defense unit at full speed towards the metal-faced Mechon. “We will save Colony 9!” He has to help her. Not that Reyn doubts her, but ever since they were little, she’s always been the kind of person that did things ninety percent of the way and needed a little extra nudge to finish the last ten. If she can attack it from behind, she’ll destroy it without fail. But what can he do to take the Mechon’s attention off of the much larger threat? Shulk is still on the ground, groaning and trying to find his bearings after a vicious clawed backhand to the stomach. Reyn’s meager armor blocked most of the careless blow, Shulk was covered in nothing but clothes, and the parts of his shirt that weren’t ripped up had stained themselves dark red. The Monado hums quietly in his white knuckled grip as he tries to use it to prop himself back up. It’s painful to watch. 

Now that they’re incapacitated, the Mechon can afford to do battle with Fiora. It knocks her over too easily with a blast of energy from a massive cannon mounted on its back, and readies itself to punch its bladed fingers through her. It's savoring the kill. If somebody other than Shulk could use that damn weapon, he’d use it himself to get this awful machine’s attention. He’s not worthy to swing it around, same as most others in Colony 9. What made Shulk? The weapon made to destroy Mechon is their only hope, but he can’t do a thing with it under normal circumstances. He’d tried earlier that day, where he picked it up only to lose control. If not for the blade’s limiter, he would have killed Fiora. And now, faced with a Mechon who doesn’t die when it should, it’s even more useless in his hands than before. But he doesn’t need to use it. He just needs to make a big enough distraction. “Shulk, I’ll give this back, lemme borrow it,” he says, the words coming out just a little too fast to make sense, but Shulk doesn’t have the presence of mind to say anything in response. That’s fine. The minute his fingers close around the handle of the blade, it roars to life. 

Keeping the Monado in his hand is like sticking two opposing poles of a magnet together. It wants to escape, but he uses every ounce of determination in his body to trap it and force it to follow his lead. There is no controlling it. Even spilled ether canisters don’t feel so wild, so _raw,_ like he’s holding the Bionis’s heart in the palm of his hand. It burns. Dunban’s burnt-atrophied arm from Sword Valley makes so much sense now. Of _course_ it’s permanently scarred if he tried to wield the Monado. Shulk clambers back to his feet and stands still, staring off into space as his eyes flash an unnatural blue for seconds too long. What is he doing? Fiora needs their help. The solution is simple, even to an oaf like him: let the Monado be his master, not the other way around. There is no controlling it. “Wait. Reyn, stop!” yells Shulk, but he doesn’t listen. Reyn can’t hear him over the humming of the weapon. “You’re going to die!” Nothing's ever hurt so much.

The familiar sensation of explosive energy building up in his grasp feels like a ticking time bomb, so he provides it with release right into the exoskeleton of the metal-faced Mechon, its claws looming over Fiora, lying prone in the defense suit. Somewhere in the background, Shulk screams.

It doesn’t even leave a scratch as the Monado flies out of his hands, skittering off to the side on the pavement and spinning back towards Shulk. He doesn’t know what he expected. Reyn stands there and raises his driver in a challenge. “Come n’ get it!” he roars, holding his blistered hand to his chest. The palm’s burnt a nasty red. It hurts, but he dismisses it as an annoyance. What’s coming next is bound to hurt more. He’s made a terrible mistake. He shouldn’t have done this. This time, his stupid brain’s made one too many bad decisions, and there is no Shulk to bail him out of this one. 

“Reyn!” Shulk yells, “Get out of there!” He doesn’t. First, it tears through the metal of his driver, shredding the arm underneath, and yanks it away from him so its next attack will be free from the distractions of shields. It’s smart enough to line up a clean shot. He’s too wired on adrenaline to feel much of anything: a mercy. The metal-faced Mechon tosses it to the side and it lays on the ground: useless, like the Monado, and torn to bits, like he’s about to be. 

The metal-faced Mechon’s claws come towards him once more, this time in slow motion, and Reyn doesn’t even try to block them again. All the natural fight-or-flight instinct in the world won’t change anything now, not after he’s already come this far. He’s got a new understanding of the ever-repeated “life-and-death situations take eternities” sentiment. Every nick and dent in its blades, every scratch, every stain where the viscera of one of Reyn’s kind would not come clean, is visible in perfect detail. How many has it slaughtered? How many anonymous layers of blood coats its claws? “Fiora,” he smiles, one last time before the Mechon tears through him.

Getting stabbed isn’t anywhere as painful as getting shot. Reyn knows he’s probably an outlier, and that most people can’t compare the two, but with getting shot, there’s no buildup. The ether bullet enters the body (chest, stomach, limb), and it’s blinding. Nothing else in the world exists except the gunshot. When getting stabbed, for better or for worse, the weapon is visible as it travels towards its victim. There’s a gradual crescendo from the moment the blade breaks the skin on one side to the moment it rips through the skin on the other. It’s easier to prepare for something that isn’t a surprise.

Reyn’s life doesn’t flash before his eyes. He doesn’t have a come-to-Bionis moment, there’s no heavenly chorus of his ancestors to whisk him away to the afterlife, it’s just painful. The Mechon with the metal face makes an annoyed noise when he doesn’t scream. Why would he? He knew what he was doing when he yanked the Monado out of Shulk’s grip.

Fiora desperately screams his name, and he wants to comfort her like he always does, make a shitty joke and boast that _a little scratch like this couldn’t do old Reyn in,_ but it’s more than a scratch, he’s torn open and bleeding from his pelvis to the base of his throat, gutted like a fish. At the point of entry, right beside his heart, the blades poke right through to his back, the wound getting shallower and shallower as it approaches his hips. The lack of depth doesn’t change much, as it’s still fatal in spite of the fact it’s inconsistent. He can still feel his legs, which at least means his spinal cord hasn't been severed. Maybe it would be better if it had: death would be quicker. The cold night air lingers on places that were never meant to be exposed to it, like his intestines, and Reyn would shiver if he could. He can’t remember which is which--isn’t the small intestine actually bigger than the large, he never paid attention in school-- but he’s pretty sure that it won’t be mattering for much longer. He bleeds out as Shulk begs him to keep his eyes open. It’s hard. He’ll just… nod off for a minute, then when he’s all rested after his power nap, he can join back up with Shulk and Fiora and scrap this faced Mechon. Reyn dies on the stone streets of Colony 9, alone, but he makes his peace with it as long as they both survive. They’re screaming, both at him and his murderer, but he can’t hear them begging for him to get back up. The dead don’t talk, and they don’t listen either. 

Fate, from its seat at the right hand of such laws of the universe as gravity, adjusts itself accordingly.


	2. Some Assembly Required

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fiora and Shulk grieve. Vanea will put this boy back together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You are dead and buried,  
> You are dead (Oh no)  
> Oh, but you never died!  
> Even as we speak, we're synthesizing blood and organs,  
> Synthesizing heart and soul!”
> 
> -Lifetime Achievement Award, Lemon Demon
> 
> Please do note that this chapter has some mildly graphic gore? Nothing too excessive but please use discretion.

“It should have been me,” Fiora remarks grimly, her and Shulk sitting on opposite ends of the cold wooden bench at Outlook Park. The sun is barely up, streets desolate and ghostly, but they’re both out and about against better judgement. Neither of them slept at all the night before and an invitation to the park was a welcome distraction. It isn’t very distracting, though, as the only thing on their minds is Reyn. Shulk wants to tell her _don’t say such things,_ but he knows otherwise, saw it in his vision, and the awful truth is that she _was._ He’ll never tell her that. Usually Reyn sits in the middle, and the distance doesn’t feel so far as it does now. But now it’s just them, and it’s like they’re missing some limb they didn’t know they had until it was gone. They didn’t even find his body. “Do you think… he’s made it back to the Bionis all right?” Without a proper burial, the odds are slim. Shulk doesn’t want to think he’s become some wandering spirit, haunting the streets of Colony 9 forever. But at least he’s probably a friendly one, the kind of specter that helps people find objects they thought were lost, and stands guard over dreaming children to keep nighttime bogeymen away. 

“Yeah. He’s back to ether now. If we didn’t find a body, it just means he dissolved fast.” Shulk doesn’t believe himself, but he forces words out anyway to comfort Fiora. The eight restless hours that had passed between the Mechon force suddenly returning back to their vile home, mindless drones following some unseen order, and grieving in the park had done nothing to calm him down. “I’ll kill it.” Fiora stares out ahead at the water their Colony is built on top of. “I will make that metal-faced Mechon pay for what it did to Reyn.” He doesn’t plan to tell anyone else about it, not Dickson, not Dunban. They’ll get in his way and slow him down. 

Knowing Fiora, Shulk thought she would be the voice of reason, like she always was with the three-now-two of them. But her desire for revenge trumps reason, and she is ready to fight. “Then I’m coming with you.”

“You’re not going to stop me?” He’s astonished.

“Why would I want to?”

“So I… wouldn’t get hurt? I don’t know.”

“The best way to make sure you won’t get hurt is to come with you myself.” She isn’t stupid, she’s bound to know that the safest place is home, but she just doesn’t care. “You know, he died thinking I didn’t trust him. I can’t take that back.” It’s so strange, to talk about Reyn in the past tense. He seemed like such a fact of life, his presence a given. 

“He didn’t, Fiora, he knew,” but Shulk’s voice sounds so weak he’s barely convincing himself. 

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“No, I’m not.” 

Neither of them have anything else to say. Uncomfortable silence reigns once more as Fiora smiles, but it’s thin and holds no joy. In a clumsy attempt to break it, she adds, “Dunban probably won’t let me go. Once I’m gone, he’ll be all alone again.” 

“So don’t tell him. I’m not telling Dickson.”

“He’ll be mad.”

“They’ll both understand this is something we have to do. And how’re they going to yell at us if they can’t find us? We’ll be back in a month or two, anyway.”

Fiora’s smile blooms into a real one for a blissful moment, then wilts again just as quickly. “Let’s go now, then. Before I lose my nerve.”

* * *

Vanea hates the Central Factory. It stinks of fear and blood, a slaughterhouse buried underneath Agniratha. The corpses brought back from raids on the Bionis are never in good shape, and Vanea never expects them to be. Why would she? It’s not like it’s a secret what Egil’s machines do to the Bions. She’s known him long enough not to be surprised when she comes face-to-Face with a baker’s dozen corpses with strange injuries. But she’s come here with a purpose, and so she grins and bears the stench. Today she will create her response to Egil’s Face Pilots; a Pilot of her own that will save her brother from himself. Lady Meyneth’s reincarnation needs only a body to provide her with an anchor to this world. When Vanea enters the lab chamber with its _Work in Progress_ sign lit up, she isn’t surprised to see one such body strapped down to the operating table, arms and legs spread eagle with its stomach bared. She’s gotten to it before the Factory could, and so Vanea deactivates the automated Face surgery procedures set in place for corpses like this one. But this one, worse than anything she’s ever seen before, is absolutely mangled. 

His insides are shredded. She can’t even tell what used to be his lungs, or heart, or liver, or stomach, because what remains of one organ are mixed with the torn-to-pieces bits of the ones around it. What had done this to him? The only perpetrator that comes to mind is their very first Face Pilot, but why? What had this boy done to deserve such a gruesome death? The mass-produced Mechons aren’t evil, they don’t have enough sentience to truly make moral or amoral choices, and she does not hate them, only their conductor. Mumkhar, on the other hand, chose to butcher this boy in such a horrific way. _Murdered in cold blood._ She will never understand how he can kill his own kind with such glee. Vanea wires him into life support (not that it will do much good at this point) and gets to work. The golden core containing Lady Meyneth’s soul lingers among scalpels and bonesaws on the small cart at her side, waiting to be used. Off comes what remains of the boy’s armor, shed in pieces on the floor. She does not enjoy desecrating Homs bodies, but it isn’t like they can feel it. At least she saves her butchery for the dead instead of the living. 

She will cut all of his organs out. They can’t be salvaged. He isn’t breathing, and it doesn’t look like there’s much blood left in his body for the heart to try and pump, so there’s not much point in keeping them. It is a struggle for Vanea to keep looking at him. She’s never been able to stomach suffering. There are strategically placed electrodes on his body, meant to pump ether through prospective Faces to keep the bodies from decaying before surgery is complete. She flicks the switch to begin the flow, and as ether infuses his skin, his eyes snap open. 

Vanea jumps back as he opens his mouth and screams in unfiltered agony. 

This has never happened before. Dead Homs don’t just come _back_ for no reason. If he was coherent enough to explain, Vanea would have asked how he dug up the soil of his shallow grave and jolted back to life, but she can’t. He’s thrashing like a wild animal at the cuffs bolting him to the table, body vulnerable and soft. They won’t budge, and even though he looks stronger than most other prospective Pilots, his manacles could hold down an Armu if they had to. He is no match for them. Vanea picks up Meyneth’s core to keep it from falling to the ground and shattering as he struggles. 

Meyneth’s core is warm to the touch. She doesn’t quite know how to describe the sensation: the best she can do is that it’s like seeing an old friend again after far too long. Vanea could euthanize this Homs herself and bring him back with the core’s power, a vessel instead of a person. It would not be hard. But at the thought, her stomach turns. Sickening, that she can think of ending a life so casually, like she’s a Face, like she’s her _brother._ It isn’t right to kill him unless he asks her to, in which case she will put him out of his misery. The core flares up in her hand in reproach. As the boy finally gets enough of a grip to look her in the eyes even as his muscles spasm, spitting what little blood he has left out of his gaping open chest cavity with surprising strength, she abolishes the thought. He hasn’t stopped making noise, but it’s died down from screaming to guttural groans, and shuddering, wheezing, gasps that make breathing sound as if it’s a painful struggle. “You’re… alive?”

He doesn’t respond, mad with pain and fear. His mouth moves, but no sound comes out, only a gurgling moan. She wishes she knew his name. Maybe it would reassure the Homs that she is to be trusted, that she wishes him no harm. Vanea doesn’t, and so she must settle for a gentle hand on his shoulder and soft words. He twitches at the touch but cannot get far. “I am going to administer some sedatives so you do not have to suffer. While you are asleep, I will fix you. Then, when you wake, we will discuss what to do next.” No response, he just stares. She hopes he understands her language. Some of the Homs from the higher-up Colonies don’t speak the common tongue the two Titans used to share in the days before the Attack, but the odds are slim that the one on her table cannot understand her. Though if Vanea’s usual luck is any indication, she’s received the one Homs in Colony 9 who cannot speak Common.

“I’m sorry,” Vanea murmurs to the Homs on her table, and he watches her face with dark eyes. “If I had my way, you would never be in this situation to begin with. You would be in your Colony, minding your business, going about your days in peace. But as we are, I will not let you die until you have the chance to decide if you would rather live.” He doesn’t speak, but this time, her Homs nods. So he can understand her. Good. It makes her job easier. “Please do not try to struggle off of this table, you’ll fail and only exacerbate your injuries.” It can’t be comfortable to lay with his stomach cut open. “You must be in pain. Let me do my job.” Vanea will not place Meyneth in his body and trap him as a backseat passenger inside of his own head. It goes against everything she stands for, and would make her just as bad as the lord of the Bionis. No, she will leave this boy as he is, replace his broken body with one that will give him a chance. 

She searches the cabinets lining the walls of the operating theater for some kind of painkiller or sedative, but of course she finds nothing. Why would Egil keep any stocked? He doesn’t care if his Faces suffer. Eventually, Vanea comes across a vial of some heavy-duty opiate, almost empty, expired by a few weeks if the label is to be believed. It’s better than cutting out her Homs’s ravaged organs while he’s still aware of everything happening to him. 

“Vanea!” calls a familiar voice from down the hall, “what is with all of this noise? I can hardly focus with this caterwauling. And I hope it’s you that disarmed the M-418, because otherwise I will have a problem to deal with myself.” Her brother’s tone leaks disdain as it gets closer and closer, pausing outside the door to the operating theater she’s chosen. “Have you made a mess inside?” 

“Yes, it was I,” she hurries, attempting to nip his curiosity in the bud before he can see the mess she’s created, and, more importantly, the still-living Homs on the table. He’d end the boy himself. Vanea stuffs Meyneth’s core into an empty cabinet and shuts it so quickly the door slams with a bang. Its dull glow peeks out from the seams of the hinges, only visible if one knows where to look. “It’s dreadful, absolutely dreadful, gore everywhere,” Egil scoffs. Machina don’t bleed, and he finds the concept of blood disgusting. “Nothing you’d like to see. Move along!” Then, lowering herself to the Homs’s ear where he lays, she whispers, “play dead, or he will have you killed!” The opiates have already begun to kick in, and it doesn’t look like her Homs needs much extra prompting to lay still. 

“What have you done to cause such a mess?” asks Egil from the other side of the door. 

“Face 19623 destroyed this one quite entirely. I am only attempting to repair it.”

He goes quiet, and Vanea praises Meyneth, for it seems like he’s left. But she hears no footsteps heading away from her lab, and Lord Egil does as Lord Egil pleases, so the door hisses open. 

“Meyneth above, you weren’t kidding,” he exclaims, weaving through the mess on the floor to the Homs on the table in the middle. “So it is fresh?”

“About as much as it can be. What are you doing here, brother?” asks Vanea as innocently as she can. There is too much room for error here. She has to believe that Egil won’t spot anything wrong with the scene, but it is better to do what she can to minimize the odds. She steps between him and the boy, but he paces around the table in the center of the room like a predator, avoiding her body-block.

“I came to supervise the creation of our latest batch of Faces from our attack on the Bionis. For what reason do you occupy the labs?”

“A new model,” she lies. Vanea forces him to make eye contact. If he’s looking her in the eyes, he isn’t looking elsewhere. She hadn’t decided what to do with her bizarre living corpse yet, but now she will have to live up to the expectations her hasty response has created. Why did she have to run her mouth?

Egil sounds surprised, but not in a bad way. Is it a good thing that he believes her so capable of senseless evil? “It’s nice to see you taking initiative with the Faces.” Vanea feels sick to her stomach at his praise. There is a reason she’s refused to take part until now, relegating herself to repair duties and mild surveillance. The idea of cutting open a Homs, so like a Machina, feels wrong, like she’s crossing a line that should be crossed by none but gods. Her first charge will ideally be her only foray into territory she hoped never to enter, and after he is complete, there will be no need to do it again. _There is a difference between saving lives this way and ending them_ , she reassures herself, but she is not sure if she believes it. “But what will make this one any different from the Infantry Series?”

“It won’t be mobile artillery, but an assassin. Smaller and lighter than the infantry Faces, combining 19623’s strength with 20814’s tactical intelligence.” Really, Mumkhar isn’t very strong, and only looks powerful when put up against Homs who couldn’t defend themselves against Mechonis weaponry. He is mean, and _persistent,_ which is where his true strength lies. Vanea just wishes he’d stop damaging his Face on purpose to spend time with her in the repair room. Gadolt, on the other hand, is one of the smartest Pilots she’d ever met, and it would not surprise her if he turned on the Mechonis someday. 

Egil’s smile is a cold and cruel thing, and it only serves as a painful reminder to Vanea of the times where it was truer, gentler, softer. She misses her brother even as he stands before her. “Well, then.” He finally examines her unfortunate new lab rat in all of its wretched glory, and his nose wrinkles at the sight of the shredded knots of viscera that pass for his organs. Vanea keeps a prayer in the silence of her heart for the Homs on her table. “It looks quite promising, and though I would like to see what you do with it, I assume you’d like to be free of distractions. I shall take my leave.” As he exits, he salts the earth behind him with a short, “I hope to see the finished product soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't expect updates so fast after this one, ha, this was just burning a hole in the pit of my stomach.


	3. The Struggle for Existence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Silver Face is born. Egil isn’t happy.

**Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake**

**and dress them in warm clothes again.**

  
  


Silver Face doesn’t know where it is when it wakes up alone in a shadowy hangar. Its optical sensors don’t function very well in the dark, and it’s hard to get a good look around. From what it can see, there look to be slots for others like it lining the walls, except unlike the one Silver Face occupies, they are empty. When it tries to detach itself from the port holding it aloft, it hits the ground from seven or eight meters up with a metallic, echoing,  _ thud _ . Pain is not something it understands, but it knows that the fall is certainly uncomfortable. It lays there on the floor and waits for orders. Time passes. Its joints begin to ache from being forced into a strange position, so Silver Face adjusts itself. Time passes. Silver Face shuts down for a while to conserve battery. Time passes. 

Eventually, after long enough that Silver Face’s batteries are fully charged, and there are no more diagnostics it can run on itself to keep occupied, the door to its hangar opens and sends a harsh slice of light onto Silver Face. It takes a few irritating seconds for the exposure settings in its optical sensors to adjust to the new light level. “Homs,” calls a woman from the doorway, “You are finally alert. I have been meaning to ask you this for days now: what is your name?”

It doesn’t answer, because it doesn’t. Silver Face is a referral code, a descriptor of what it is rather than a name, shorthand for  _ Face unit that is silver.  _ She looks worried. “Can you speak?” That’s a good question. Can it? At its silence, the woman is flummoxed. “I take it as a no. I was hoping to learn your name, and to apologize for what I have done. You are a Mechon now.” What a weird thing to say. It’s always been a Mechon. At least, it has been since it woke up. “It’s not safe to release you from your Face unit yet, but once you’ve adjusted a bit and your blood’s gone through enough dialysis, we will speak again. Stand up, Homs, and keep your dignity.” She leaves. It’s not a Homs, it can’t be, but it stands up anyway. 

Something about staying powered down for long periods of time fills Silver Face with energy that it has to burn, or its ether tank will explode. It wasn’t made to sit still and review its black box footage. There’s a whole Titan to explore all around it, just waiting to be seen, and the idea of being stuck in its little charging port alone makes it want to go up in flames. When it’s certain there will be no consequences for its actions, it sneaks from the factory it was born in and soars out of the Mechonis, exiting through an exhaust vent (it’s a very tight fit!) on its back. Its flight is strange and stilted, surprisingly disjointed for something Silver Face has been doing all of its life, like a baby bird learning to use its wings for the first time. 

The world is bright _ ,  _ light reflecting off the sea surrounding both titans _.  _ Inside the Mechonis, there was no day or night, no way to tell how long it had spent in containment. Bionis looms above it, and Silver Face can’t bear to look at something so horribly alien, different from itself, so it dives into the Mechonis’ head through the slats beneath its visor. This is far more agreeable. 

A city it’s never seen before stretches out beneath Silver Face, empty except for Mechon patrolling the rubble of broken-down streets and strange statues of beasts in the middle of roads for no reason. Surely, if there are guards, there must be something worth protecting. None of the Mechon look the part. They’re all inelegant and flimsy-looking, none stand tall, and Silver Face wonders if they even know how. It pities them. 

Was there always this much waiting about Silver Face’s head? It’s been trapped in the factory all its life. It lands, perching itself atop one of those stone beasts, and looks around. Remains of buildings glow with soft light as a statue of a woman looms above the city with three white halos surrounding her. Silver Face is drawn to her like a moth to flame, but will come back to her later after it’s had its fill of the ghost city surrounding it. 

There isn’t much to see, only more of the same  _ nothing  _ that dominates the sections of the city Silver Face has already visited. Something terrible has happened here. Cities do not exist without people to live in them. But this one is empty, so where have its occupants gone? It rounds a corner and comes face-to-face with an M97/CYCLE, which would not be an encounter of note, had it not seen its own reflection in the Mechon’s well-polished side. 

Silver Face looks at itself and wails, its thrusters activating at full-force and sending itself hurtling into the M97 with a bang. The wall they both collide into crumbles around it. The M97 won’t go down without a fight, and its mechanical blades tear at Silver Face, but can’t do a thing. It’s made of stronger stuff than the other Mechon and will not be so easily disassembled. The M97, on the other hand? Silver Face drives its hands into the seams of its exoskeleton where they’ve been welded together over and over again until they split apart, and Silver Face scrabbles at its punctured outsides until it finds a good grip, then slowly, slowly, pulls the Mechon apart one metal plate at a time until it stops moving. 

  
  


* * *

  
Where is it? What’s going on? It doesn’t know. What did it just destroy? It hopes it wasn’t something precious and irreplacable, but vows to come back to check later once it reorients itself. For now, it flees. Silver Face jolts in a random direction and feels itself smash through something completely different. There’s some strange divorce between its motherboard and its body, pain manifesting as dull flickers instead of the fully fledged knife-in-the-ribs it should be. Its body is disconnecting from the circuits that should govern it. But it can’t do a thing about that. 

Why doesn’t it recognize where it is? Its limbs are too long, everything is wrong, it’s overwhelmed with such a potent panic that it feels like it is dying. Through the haze cuts the statue of that woman.  _ It’s so bright. _ The gentle halos that surround her make her stand out against the dark landscape of this distressing city. Silver Face hovers above this alien city and takes off towards the statue. She must be able to do something, as the magnetic air of benevolence she exudes washes over the city below.

She’s beautiful. Silver Face kneels in front of the orange folds of her dress and gazes up at her gentle face. There are massive, well-worn grooves in the metal beneath its feet Even though her eyes are closed, it feels like she’s looking back, and it soothes this awful wrongness that has sunken into Silver Face’s being. Is she the goddess of this empty city, the Mechon her subjects, or is there something Silver Face is missing, like a cosmic punchline? It kneels below her and lets her gentle presence sink in. 

The city rumbles beneath Silver Face’s feet. Something is happening. It is strong and quick, but even it has its limits. It doesn’t want to stick around and find out, and it moves to escape, but before it can make it far enough away, a golden Mechon the size of the sun emerges over the shrine’s horizon. It seems to be singlemindedly focused on the statue in the center, and it hasn’t noticed Silver Face yet, slightly off to the side, trying to merge with the walls. 

  
  


The golden Mechon takes up a place in the center of the shrine, floating above it all as it surveys the area. Its head turns, and Silver Face feels the heat of its optical sensors on its back. “Ah, Vanea, there is no need to hide,” the golden Mechon calls, its tail swaying as it sinks to the ground and lands. The voice is deep enough to denote the Mechon as masculine. He sinks into the grooves in the ground like a plug to a socket. Silver Face’s servos lock up in his presence. “You have… come to worship?” It shakes in place, metal parts frantically vibrating back and forth with no real outlet for all the energy it is suddenly burning. The ether tank’s levels are getting strangely low, a warning light flashing on the peripheral edges of Silver Face’s vision. Is this what fear is like? “I did not think you did that any more. Lady Meyneth is here with us in our city even still, for She would not abandon Her children. Though, to be honest, I was beginning to doubt it as well.”

Frightened silence. 

“Are you well? You are terribly quiet, nary a barbed remark for me, dear sister. Where has your tongue gone?”

Silver Face does not doubt for a second that this golden Mechon holds some unimaginable power that it cannot hope to compete with. But it also knows that whoever he is looking for, Silver Face isn’t it. Why does this large Face Unit continue to grill him? 

“Respond, Vanea. What is the matter?” 

What can it say? 

“Your Face, why have you only now weaponized it? Have you finally decided to fight?”

Silver Face wants to combust. 

“Answer me!” Silver Face could not speak in his presence even if it knew how. The golden Mechon has a powerful aura, one that crushes Silver Face’s body into little more than a soda can. “...No, she wouldn’t have. Would she?” He mutters more to himself than to Silver Face. “If you be Machina, then speak!” 

Silver Face can’t. The golden Mechon dominating the shrine of this gentle goddess gets into a fighting stance. Even if Silver Face wasn’t frozen in place, it knows that this is not a fight it could win. “You,” his voice sours, “are not my sister.”

\------ 

Machina don’t experience emotion on a physical-chemical level, but if they did, Egil would be boiling alive with rage. How dare this Homs defile his sister’s old Face? And to deceive him into scraping his insides raw, divulging his lapse in faith with one who might as well be a stranger, is truly unforgivable. This insect has made a fool of him, and for that, Egil will make it pay. It was Vanea’s choice to give her old Mechon a lowly core unit. Why would she use something made in their Lady’s image on an insect? How dare she commit such sacrilege? It makes Egil sick. The Faces are already unholy creations, he knows this, but this is a slap in the face to Her memory. It is strangely still and does not move even though Egil is exerting no strength of will over it. Is it afraid? Egil didn’t know the Face units could  _ feel  _ fear.

But it’s recognized Lady Meyneth as its god. He saw it kneeling in worship with his own eyes. Why else would it come to the shrine? None of Egil’s other abominations have done that. Perhaps that is Vanea’s gift; she hasn’t dirtied her hands as much as he, so her monsters absorb some of her pacifistic nature. She would be cross if he scrapped it, for it is not his machine to destroy, and to misdirect his rage through a docile creature that is already his to control is a waste of his time. Egil softens his fighting stance but doesn’t relax one bit. 

No, he will not punish this Face for piety. Instead, he will test how devoted to Lady Meyneth it really is. He does not quite trust this Homs yet. Perhaps it understands that Meyneth is a goddess to be worshipped, but not the nobility of Her goal. Egil has just recently deployed some Mechon to the Gaur Plains on the Bionis’ shin. Adding one more to their numbers would only help to ensure that the few remaining survivors of his attack on Colony 6 are dealt with swiftly. Stragglers are always so difficult to crush underfoot. “You. What is your ID number?” It doesn’t answer, which is frustrating, and Egil will have to check in the database later. It happens rarely, but some of the new Faces need some time to assimilate to their bodies. Homs are not meant to be like Machina, so attuned with their Titan, and their accidental resistance is annoying, but expected. For now, he will continue to refer to the machine as Silver Face. “No matter. I will give you a chance to prove yourself. Do not disappoint me.” 

“Your first task in Her name is to crush the Colony Six refugees in their camp for good.” Silver Face, glad not to be destroyed, nods its head. Some part of him flickers with rage still at the thought of Vanea repurposing her Face. Ultimately he knows he must accept that what’s done is done, and Egil will make use of the new weapon available to him. It is rude to turn down gifts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a writing motto I have always held dear is “make the gayboy suffer” but you haven’t seen anything yet my friends 
> 
> This sort of gets into some personal headcanons of mine, the biggest one being that Face units have been a part of Machina culture for a very long time, and Egil was just the first to weaponize them after his defeat at Dunban’s hands at Sword Valley. He realized he needed some way to fight the Monado, whereas the Machina in the hidden village just scrapped theirs for parts for houses and other things they needed to survive because they aren’t a warlike people. The pods young Machina occupy are functionally the same as smaller Faces without Homs inside. Vanea made Silver Face when she was very young as an act of starry-eyed devotion towards Meyneth (which is why it has Meyneth’s silhouette) and once she decides to try and revive Meyneth with a Homs body, she uses SF because to her it seems fitting, and it is the only unit she has access to. Yaldabaoth’s name will be explained later, I do have some reasoning for it beyond “false god who is destroyed because it cannot comprehend the existence of divinity beyond itself”.
> 
> a question for you all- who’s your favorite Xenoblade 1 character and why? I like Reyn just because he’s dumb and cares about his friends and honestly... that’s the perfect man

**Author's Note:**

> please comment, feedback fuels me
> 
> [come say hi on twitter!!!](https://twitter.com/alliedtowinter)  
> [and tumblr too.](https://alliedtowinter.tumblr.com)


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